I just got finished with a three hour shoot with Catherine Feeny, a musician that recently posted an ad on Craigslist looking for photographers in anticipation of the release of her third album. She chose three photographers out of the barrage of responses she received, and I was lucky enough to be one of them. Like the concert photos I shoot for Melophobe, it wasn’t a paid gig, but I should have some great stuff to begin my portfolio with (yes, begin) and she also gave me copies of her last album and an EP (which I had already been listening to all week).

By the way, her last album, Hurricane Glass, is great. Here’s a video:

It’s funny, because this is really my first shoot that didn’t involve me taking stupid photos of one of the five people I know. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true, because I’ve taken lots of skateboarding photos of friends of friends or people I’ve approached at the skatepark, but skate photos aren’t quite as personal as a shoot like this. Cameron and I scouted a cool spot by the apartment last week for the shoot, so I started there, shot until we lost sunlight, then came back to the apartment and shot a couple sets inside. In total, I have over 500 photos to dig through, then she’s coming back over to go through the final picks with me. In my head, I had envisioned a complete train wreck, since I’m uncomfortable around strangers (Nina being there helped me a lot), and I didn’t really have a plan going in. My on-location checklist was “find location;” I didn’t have any posing or angle ideas. I just showed up, hoped something would hit me, and started shooting. There were rocky points, but for the most part the whole thing flowed pretty smoothly. Her comfort in front of the camera helped a lot, and she just kinda did her own thing, which saved me from having to direct, which I also don’t do well.

Here’s a couple I picked out in the first run through all the shots. I mostly modified color and exposure on these (just global adjustments in Lightroom, nothing in Photoshop). I didn’t spend a lot of time in post because I don’t know what she wants from the pictures, and I just wanted to get a couple up to give you an idea. I’m sure I’ll be posting finals soon.